Rob Lowe Reveals Dark Secret of Teen Idols Like Justin Bieber (see!)

Rob Lowe talks to Oprah about teen idol fame. In this photo, he speaks at the Get In Touch Foundation’s 2014 Pretty In Pink Luncheon last month. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images)

Rob Lowe knows a thing or two about being a teen idol; he was one at 15. He offered some startling insights about the latest teen idol Justin Bieber, what he’s going through and where his career is heading.

Lowe, now 50, sat down with Oprah Winfrey to talk about the life of a teen idol.

Lowe burst onto the scene in the 1983 TV film “Thursday’s Child.” He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a series, miniseries or television film.

He broke through the same year in Francis Ford Coppola’s gritty movie “The Outsiders,” with Emilio Estevez.

He and a group of other young break-out actors that included Estevez, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy became known in Hollywood as the “Brat Pack.”

But, right, where are they now?

As Lowe noted, fame is fleeting. His own career went down in flames in 1988, when a videotape leaked showing him having sex with two women, one of whom was 16. He was in Atlanta at the time the video was made, attending the Democratic National Convention.

The scandal put him out of work for a while, but he eventually rehabilitated his career and has gone on to star in a hit television series, “The West Wing” and a number of movies.

“I have tremendous empathy,” Lowe tells Oprah about the Biebs.

“He makes really good music, but I think he knows the dark secret, and the dark secret is 80 percent of his audience doesn’t give a sh*t about the music. And he knows it. It bums him out.

“He is the guy who is standing in front at a moment that they’re going through a developmental thing… If it wasn’t him, it would be somebody else, like it was me,” he said.

Upshot: fame is fleeting.

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Keith Girard is Editor and Publisher of TheImproper, New York City’s cutting edge arts, entertainment pop culture and lifestyle Web magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of Billboard magazine and a reporter for the Washington Post among other media positions.